Hire a Real Estate Website Builder Who Knows How to Attract Organic Traffic 

As promised, here’s part two of our walk-through on how to find a real estate website builder that builds websites that convert…

Do their websites convert?

Remember: “… simple designs have higher conversion rates.” 

And, again, the home page should be the simplest of all. 

We know how tempting it is for agents to tell visitors right off the bat that they’re the best agents on the planet and why. 

But leave that for the About page. Consider using your best, short testimonial instead.

Understand what’s important to your visitors and jettison the rest, again, at least on the site’s homepage. You can’t convert visitors who leave the second they land on your site.

So, what’s important to them? Here are the no-brainers:

  • Buyers are looking for an agent, listings, and knowledge about the buying and mortgage process.
  • Sellers are looking for an agent and knowledge about the selling process. They, too, may be looking at listings to find their next home.

They want to find this information easily, so don’t make them guess where it is on your site.

Do they have the ability to attract organic search engine traffic?

So, how do you turn your website into an even bigger lead-generating monster? Start by performing small changes to several pages on your site.

Localize blog posts as much as possible. It only takes minutes to add local search terms. Here’s an example from a recent post about appraisal problems in hot markets:

Fiery real estate markets such as what we’re experiencing are a dream come true for sellers unless prices are rising so fast that the market can’t keep up.

Stick the name of your market in that post to boost its SEO value.

Fiery real estate markets such as what we’re experiencing here in Vallejo

For even more value, link the name of the city to its page on your site. These types of links are called “internal linking” and each of your blog posts should contain at least one. 

“… using the right internal linking strategy can boost your SEO.” Learn more about internal linking and how you can use it to boost your site’s visibility in organic searches at Yoast.com.

Then, work on your neighborhood pages by adding local photos.

Right about now you’re wondering “What happened to help me find the right real estate website builder?” 

Regardless of the real estate website company you choose, your site will need to be localized. 

Does the website builder get you through the entire process?

Compare vendors on whether or not they offer the “goodies” to help make your workday easier:

  • Template-based pages that make adding and deleting information a snap
  • Help to build landing pages
  • CRM integration that will help you convert website visitors into leads
  • A slew of apps to help with everything from lead capture and management to boosting SEO and increasing website traffic.

The best real estate agent website maximizes an agent’s brand and optimizes his or her online activities with one simple goal in mind: To help you get more leads, sell more houses, and improve your professional and personal brand.


When you have time…below are some marketing tools to help support your success.

1. Put Your Real Estate Business a Step Above with Your Own Branded Magazin

Homes & Life Magazine is a customizable magazine with rich, full-color content and a sharp, professional aesthetic. It includes compelling, direct, response-driven articles written by real estate industry experts and engaging lifestyle content. Send out Homes & Life Magazine in Just Minutes – No Minimums Required. Or we’ll ship it to you. Homes & Life Magazine is the ultimate “Coffee Table Lingerer”! …and it costs less than sending a greeting card!Click Here

2. The Free 6-Month Done-For-You Strategic Marketing Planner

The Real Estate Marketing Planner is a powerful 6-Month Guide that strategically defines what marketing to do and when. Four key market segments include niche Markets, geographic farming, sphere of influence, and past clients. – Click Here

3. The Free Online Real Estate Business Plan

The Real Estate Business Plan allows you to enter your business goals for the year and get a breakdown of how many prospects, listings, closings, and so on are needed to reach your financial goals.   – Click Here

4. The Become a Listing Legend Free eBook 

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Become-A-Listing-Legend-3D-Book-White-274x300.jpg

Ready to take a vertical leap in your real estate career? If you’re looking for inspiration…and the tools and methods to dominate a market and go to the top in real estate…you’ll find them in this free book. – Click Here


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In Defense of Imagination

From Public Books:

In his short story “The Paper Menagerie,” Ken Liu makes a case for imagination’s value: for its innate significance and material power. I teach “The Paper Menagerie” every year in my introduction to literary studies course at West Virginia University, and every year, it makes me and most of my students cry. Liu’s story charts the deterioration of a once tender relationship between a Chinese mother and her Chinese American son, figuring their connection through a set of magical paper animals. The creatures that Mom crafts out of recycled wrapping paper using zhezhi, or Chinese papercraft, are imbued with life, and Jack establishes a strong bond with all of the animals, especially Laohu, a tiger. But as a preteen, after a neighborhood child instigates a racist bullying campaign that centers around the menagerie, Jack distances himself from his mother and all that she stands for: her cultural practices; her papercraft; her racial difference. It’s only years after her death, after his girlfriend finds the menagerie in storage and Laohu comes alive once more, that Jack finally values his mom and realizes all that he’s lost.

In its emotional intensity and exquisitely crafted plot, “The Paper Menagerie” is a wonderful vehicle for reaching students, but the feature that really draws me back each time is its rich theory of art. For Liu, art’s power resides simultaneously in its three main elements: the creative process, the work itself, and the act of aesthetic appreciation. Liu registers this flexible and expansive theory of art through the trope of paper—this story’s dominant motif. Paper takes many forms in “The Paper Menagerie”: it’s a reusable resource (like the wrapping paper that Mom uses to craft her animals); a method of facilitating transnational connection (in the printed catalogs that Jack’s dad uses to meet Mom, who was then in Hong Kong); a metonym for immigration documentation (Mom needs papers to move to the US); and a medium for communicating a personal history (Laohu unfurls his body upon his revival, revealing a letter from Mom to her estranged son). It’s through art—through Laohu—that Mom is able to posthumously reconnect with Jack by narrating her life story, expressing her pain at his emotional distance and confirming her abiding love for him. It’s also through art that Jack is finally able to appreciate both his mother and his cultural heritage. Unlike the ineffectual paper tigers of idiom, Liu’s animate paper menagerie signifies art’s vitality: its liveliness and magic; its necessity and power.


Believing in art’s magic—in the power of creativity to bring imagined worlds to life—underpins every aspect of my work as an English professor, and never more so than this year, when both my job and its very purpose were under threat. As a professor at the now infamously beleaguered West Virginia University, a labor organizer with West Virginia Campus Workers, and a faculty senator engaging with a frequently hostile administration, my own reflections on art’s value, and more broadly of the liberal arts, have taken an acute turn.

In March 2023, WVU president E. Gordon Gee made the shock announcement that hundreds of faculty and staff would be subject to a reduction in force (RIF) and dozens of core educational programs would close. Since then, WVU employees have lived in a state of significant anxiety. By June 2023, 135 faculty and staff had lost their jobs. By July, nearly half of the remaining faculty were under review. By August, afflicted programs appealed their fates, defending themselves against drastic cuts that would see entire departments eliminated and others losing nearly half of all professors. By September, the board of governors had cut an additional 143 faculty at all ranks while an additional eight people were unilaterally laid off in the John Chambers College of Business and Economics. By October, faculty who’d been cut had received their notices of termination. By November, RIFed faculty had begun the process of appealing the university’s decisions; only one was successful. They’d also learned that, despite the best efforts of a team of DC and WV employment lawyers, their cases lacked the necessary common ground for a class action suit. By December, more people had learned that they would be let go; 16 people were RIFed in the Libraries and 9 people in the Teaching and Learning Commons. So far, 311 people have lost their jobs, with untold consequences for the university’s reputation, employee morale, the local economy, and the future educational opportunities of young West Virginians.

Narrated this way, the picture is bleak—and the mood in Morgantown is bleak indeed. Too many talented employees have lost their livelihoods because university leadership has seemingly decided that higher education should cater to market needs rather than cultivate independent thought and intellectual passion. President Gee’s insistence that there is no financial crisis, despite a well-publicized $45 million deficit, suggests that these unprecedented cuts are at least as much ideologically fueled as they are caused by taking on an unsustainable debt load and failing to convince Republican legislatures to increase spending on public universities. WVU’s administration continues to spend lavishly on their own comforts, including unnecessary flights on private jets. Meanwhile, more than 300 people and their families have lost their jobs and incomes, harming our local economy and the very fabric of our community.

But what’s happening at WVU is not an anomaly, except in scale. Since WVU announced its unprecedented cuts, administrators have announced layoffs at UNC Greensboro, SUNY Potsdam, the University of New Hampshire, and more. And it’s not just the humanities that are at risk, either; WVU’s sweeping cuts have impacted programs as diverse as math, chemistry, music, languages, public health, soil sciences, and education. Leadership teams across the country are coming for the liberal arts, selling the public an inferior product that’s been packaged by management consultancies, particularly Huron Consulting Group and rpk GROUP. What’s emerging is a radicalized belief that the public university is a place not to acquire deep knowledge but to learn basic job skills. In their commitment to market logics and the whims of a small sector of the right-wing electorate, an increasing number of university presidents have little time for independent thought or creative intellectual inquiry that might not bear immediately practical applications. In West Virginia, the current legislature has cast young people in the state as unworthy of having career aspirations beyond a handful of localized industries. The transformed university that Gee imagines as his legacy, from this, his last presidential post, is built on market logics that valorize skill acquisition and ignore the value of deep learning.

In August 2023, when uncertainty over my own employment and academic future was at its highest, and when all of us on campus were worried about our colleagues and students, teaching “The Paper Menagerie” offered a welcome reprieve. Immersed in an exquisitely crafted and conceptually complex story, I could share with my students the value of studying what you love. Unlike WVU’s leadership or the consultancies that it’s used to legitimize its actions, Liu rejects the oppressive dictates and dull uniformity of market logics. His account of the paper menagerie applauds experimentation and idiosyncrasy, curiosity and imagination—qualities that are not only dismissed by neoliberal advocates of market dominance but that cannot thrive under such conditions. Jack and the animals play together for years, sharing adventures that sometimes produce sheer pleasure and at other times lead to casualties: the water buffalo tries to wallow in soy sauce, only to discover that his paper feet soak up the liquid, damaging his capillaries and leaving him with a permanent limp. Laohu chases sparrows in the backyard but stops after “a cornered bird struck back in desperation and tore his ear.” And a shark drowns after Jack places him in water: the shark “became soggy and translucent, … the folds coming undone.” Yet these methods of failed experimentation also lead to discoveries: the buffalo learns to avoid liquids, Laohu learns to avoid sparrows, and Jack learns that paper sharks are not made for water—but that their tinfoil variant can swim. The process of deep learning, Liu suggests, requires imagination and creativity, experimentation and play, whether or not these activities yield profits or strengthen markets.

Link to the rest at Public Books

Having attended college in a different century, PG is in no position to provide informed commentary on the OP, but will say that shaking up need not be the same as shaking down.

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We Need To Kill The Zombie Comstock Act Before It Does Real Damage

Young woman with abortion pill and glass of water on blurred background, closeup

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!

Reading the tea leaves after the oral arguments in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine seems to indicate mifepristone is safe for now, but also revealed some justices may be willing to ban the abortion drug under the dormant Comstock Act. Which congressperson became the first to propose repealing the Comstock Act before it can be used that way?

Hint: The law bans mailing, possessing, or selling “obscene materials,” which specifically includes medicine or instruments used in abortions. The 1873 law is in danger of being revived post-Dobbs.

See the answer on the next page.

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What Seattle-area homebuyers should expect after national settlement – The Seattle Times

A massive legal settlement could upend the Seattle-area real estate industry and fundamentally shift the way homebuyers pay their agents. 
Or not. 
The National Association of Realtors announced Friday it has reached a $418-million settlement agreement stemming from a federal lawsuit accusing the trade group of inflating real estate agent commissions. The 1.5-million-member organization agreed to make key changes to its commission practices. The news set off a flurry of speculation about just how much upheaval could be coming to the industry many Americans navigate to make the most expensive purchase of their lives.
In Western Washington, the future is even murkier because of key differences in the way homes are bought and sold in the region.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty,” Seattle Windermere agent Sol Villarreal said. “We don’t have the information we need yet to know how that’s going to play out.”
Ongoing lawsuits against NAR hinge on how real estate agents are paid.
Home sellers typically pay a commission to their agent, who then splits that with the agent representing the buyer. Homebuyers don’t usually pay any direct commission to their agent. 
Critics say this arrangement discourages competition and keeps commissions fixed to their 5%-6% norm. Although sellers’ agents arguably could, in theory, offer lower payment to buyers’ agents, critics warn that buyers’ agents might steer their clients away from homes with low or no commissions. 
Consumer advocates and home sellers have taken aim at those practices in recent years. Friday’s settlement stems from a 2019 lawsuit filed in Illinois. NAR lost a similar case in Missouri in the fall. 
The settlement agreement, which still requires court approval, spells out NAR’s plan to change the way commissions are advertised. The agreement would prohibit sellers’ agents from displaying the commissions they offer to buyers’ agents when they list homes on multiple listing services, starting in July. NAR will also require agents to enter into written agreements with homebuyers stating the cost of the agent’s services. The agreement covers the many listing services Realtor associations own across the country.
In Western Washington, though, there’s a wrinkle: The Northwest Multiple Listing Service, or NWMLS, which covers 26 of Washington’s 39 counties, is independent from NAR, meaning it will not be automatically covered by the settlement.
The settlement offers a path for that type of listing service: They can accept the same terms, prohibit information about buyers’ agent pay in listings, and pay toward a settlement fund. In return, the agreement would release them from “liability for the types of claims brought in these cases on behalf of home sellers related to broker commissions,” according to an NAR summary of the terms.
NWMLS leaders have not yet said whether they plan to follow that path. The organization did not directly respond to the question Monday.
Unlike many other markets, NWMLS has proactively changed some policies, including allowing sellers to offer no commission to buyers’ agents. Washington also has already begun requiring real estate agents to enter written agreements with buyers and sellers that include their terms of payment.
The NWMLS said in a statement Monday that it has already “made changes to its rules, forms, and processes that address the issues raised by the national litigation and outlined in the proposed settlement agreement.”
Those changes “enhanced transparency, consumer choice, and negotiation opportunities related to broker compensation,” the statement said.
Even so, the changes do not appear to have resulted in much of a drop in commissions here. A 2022 review of nearly 500 Seattle home listings found that the vast majority offered roughly the same commissions. 
Given that, the local listing service is “at risk of being sued,” said Stephen Brobeck, a senior fellow at the Consumer Federation of America who has pushed for changes to real estate commissions. “My guess is they will accept the terms of the agreement and evolve their practices.”
Washington Realtors CEO Nathan Gorton cautioned that it’s too early to predict how the changes could play out locally.
“I’m not sure this is going to change transactions in Washington state very much if at all,” Gorton said.
But consumer advocates say the settlement takes the industry one step closer to “decoupling” the commissions paid to buyers’ and sellers’ agents, even in Washington.
Attorneys representing the home sellers in the Illinois case said in a statement the settlement means “brokers will now compete in a free market, where they are compensated based on the value of the work they perform, not based on the threat that sellers will be unable to sell their homes unless buyer brokers are compensated at an inflated rate.”
Buyers’ agents worry the shift could lead sellers to stop offering commissions to buyer’s agents, leaving buyers to pay their agents upfront as they try to juggle closing costs and down payments — or to navigate the process alone.
“I would be disappointed if the MLS chose to go down that path … and I think there’s a lot of people out there who agree with me,” said Kim Colaprete, an agent with Coldwell Banker Bain’s Team Diva office in Seattle. “That really does add a lot of stress onto the system for buyers.”
About 80% of Villareal’s business comes from homebuyers, he said. The push to fully separate buyers’ and sellers’ commissions is “a scary position for Realtors,” he said.
“Imagine being a buyer in nine of the last 10 years in the Seattle real estate market [without an agent],” Villareal said. “Being a buyer with no representation would just be a terrible thing for consumers.”
Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman, whose firm offers discounted listing services and employs agents, argued for moving to a system where buyers pay their agent directly. 
“If you believe in the value of a buyer’s agent, let the buyer pay them,” he said in an interview. 
Under the current system, longtime agents who’ve “stuck by their customers for six or 12 months” and others who “just end up writing an offer for somebody they met four hours ago” could earn the same commission, Kelman said. 
“The idea that both of those people should earn the same amount and it should be set in advance regardless of the service level, regardless of the relationship with the customer, regardless of the agent’s experience — that’s where we take exception to it,” he said. 
Consumer advocates who’ve criticized the current commission structure say the shift will translate into savings for homebuyers and, eventually, sellers.
Consumers could save 20% to 30% on real estate commissions, Brobeck said.
But changes will not be immediate. 
Under the agreement, sellers’ agents can still offer commissions to buyers’ agents, but cannot list those offers in the listing services where agents trade information about homes. 
Instead, buyers’ agents could call sellers’ agents to ask about commissions or sellers could offer buyers a credit of some other kind, like help with their closing costs, to offset the cost the buyer would now be paying to their agent.
The current structure of commissions is “the glue that makes the real estate industry work right now,” said Villarreal, the Windermere agent who also sits on policy committees of local Realtor associations. “So, the question is when you unwind that, does it still keep working the way it has anyway, or does something else take its place?”
Some real estate agents are skeptical that a shift in commissions could really save buyers money, when inventory, interest rates and other factors are the primary drivers of home prices.
“I don’t necessarily believe that if the seller is paying less money to the buyer that they’re automatically going to price their property lower than the market value,” Colaprete said.
Brobeck predicts change will be gradual. Buyers will become more aware of real estate commissions, some will try to negotiate, and discount brokerages will continue to pop up, he predicted. Eventually, “that will put downward pressure on [commission] rates,” he said. Sellers could eventually try to negotiate with their agents, too. 
In the meantime, though, “the transition will be messy,” he said.
The opinions expressed in reader comments are those of the author only and do not reflect the opinions of The Seattle Times.

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I Like (or, So Much to Love)

A riot of snowflakes tumbling from welkin reservoirs… 

It feels SO good to get up and want to stay in the upright position 

after a few mornings of lying down again as soon as I was up…

thankfully the worst of the bug only lasted a few days! 

Still in slow motion, but at least I’m in motion!😅

There really is no end to a poem like this…

I began this poem after reading Brenda’s post on Friday morning, HERE

before I was ‘under the weather’.

The first line inspired by these little guys…

Thatch matted metamorphosis of finches turning gold…

Icicle-brickled eaves…

Because granddaughter is going to celebrate her birthday this year

 with her other set of Grandparents (in Nova Scotia!) 

we had an early celebration planned for Sunday but needed to cancel it. 😪

However, Granddaughter’s/grandchildren’s (well, everyone’s)

 disappointment was cheered a little

 after being told she would still get her gift.

They did an outdoor ‘deck drop-by’…

When they were ready to leave youngest Grandson came to me

 for his regular goodbye hug and kiss.

 When I told him gramma is sick, and better to skip hugs today 

he didn’t move but just stood there with his arms held up 😂💗

gazing expectantly with his big blue eyes,

 so of course he got a big tried-not-to-breathe-on-him hug 

and a kiss on his hat 😂

Bird entertainment…

Robins.

Things I Like…

Thatch matted metamorphosis of finches turning gold

British accents; a patchwork quilt, laughter of young and old

The pleasure of an afternoon when to-do lists are tossed

Blush hush of dusk. Pale crescent moon. Babies. Dawn, dipped in frost

Old books that smell like years gone by; that stoke nostalgia’s kiss

Warm mug to wrap chilled hands around while lost in coffee-bliss

Nature’s quieter pose, before spring flings ajar bud-doors

A riot of snowflakes tumbling from welkin reservoirs

Impromptu lunch date with dear mom and dad, while life allows

And cherishing them more and more as time its touch endows

Epiphanies while sipping tea with comrades, battle-scarred

(there is no ‘small talk’ when love trusts enough to low’r its guard)

An immense sense of gratitude no poem can curtail

A little lad, mud puddle glad where paper boats set sail

Flowers to give or to receive. April showers. Family

Enchanting lands of make-believe beneath the willow tree

A hand in hand stroll with a child. Icicle-brickled eaves

Worship hymns. Wisdom. Lilacs. Field full of hand-stooked sheaves

Autumn leaves. Winding backroads. Woodland trails. Old bridges. Trains

Thunderstorms. Horses running free with waving tails and manes

Gardens. Meadows. Babbling brooks. Bare feet and Butterflies

Spring peepers. Innocence. Lamplight. Old apple trees. Sunrise

Bible stories and Birthday cakes. Lakes, silver in the sun

Puppies. Long stretchy skirts. Winter rainbows. Workout done

Raindrop plip-plop. The humble joy of health after flu bug

Littlest grandson who won’t leave without a Gramma-hug

Bird entertainment. Robins. Rail fence. Tulips. Daffodils

A freshly cleaned or painted room. Vista of rolling hills

Window sills with flowers. Mother-in-law’s geraniums

Sea-song. Beach walks. Flip-flops. August. Crickets. Dahlias. Ripe plums

Poem-a-day-challenge, God’s glory that heavens declare

Grape arbors. Campfire cooking. Wisteria. Fix of fresh air

Lines filled with flapping laundry. 

Shadow-art on countryside

Scent of summer’s rain-tamed dust or fresh-mown hay. 

Bike ride

Music. 

Forget-me-nots. 

Mercies, too manifold to name

Sisters. 

Hot-cross buns. 

Easter. 

Hope through He from whence we came…

© Janet Martin

I wanted to mention more but the poem was getting too long;

little fists full of first dandelion bouquets

rosy faces framed in woolly hoods

a warm handshake

the meeting of eyes… no words needed

wild-flowered meadow

crisp apple (or, apple crisp!)

mellow, yellow pear

pussy willows

picnics

sap buckets brimming,

wood smoke curlicues,

neatly piled wood stacks,

cellar full of canning=thankful satisfaction

cookbooks,

supper soup,

weathered buildings,

front porches,

front doors,

and so much more

bee-butts, (their bodies  shamelessly burrowed in bloom-bells,)

zinnias, 

watering cans,

ivy,

wind-chimes,

snowmen,

okay, I will stop

Thank-you God, for filling this world with so much to delight us…

Ps.40:5

Many, Lord my God,
    are the wonders you have done,
    the things you planned for us.
None can compare with you;
    were I to speak and tell of your deeds,
    they would be too many to declare.

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More doctors use ChatGPT to help with busy workloads, but is AI a reliable assistant?

From Fox News:

Dr. AI will see you now.

It might not be that far from the truth, as more and more physicians are turning to artificial intelligence to ease their busy workloads.

Studies have shown that up to 10% of doctors are now using ChatGPT, a large language model (LLM) made by OpenAI — but just how accurate are its responses?

A team of researchers from the University of Kansas Medical Center decided to find out.

“Every year, about a million new medical articles are published in scientific journals, but busy doctors don’t have that much time to read them,” Dan Parente, the senior study author and an assistant professor at the university, told Fox News Digital.

“We wondered if large language models — in this case, ChatGPT — could help clinicians review the medical literature more quickly and find articles that might be most relevant for them.”

For a new study published in the Annals of Family Medicine, the researchers used ChatGPT 3.5 to summarize 140 peer-reviewed studies from 14 medical journals.

Seven physicians then independently reviewed the chatbot’s responses, rating them on quality, accuracy and bias.

The AI responses were found to be 70% shorter than real physicians’ responses, but the responses rated high in accuracy (92.5%) and quality (90%) and were not found to have bias.

Serious inaccuracies and hallucinations were “uncommon” — found in only four of 140 summaries.

“One problem with large language models is also that they can sometimes ‘hallucinate,’ which means they make up information that just isn’t true,” Parente noted.

“We were worried that this would be a serious problem, but instead we found that serious inaccuracies and hallucination were very rare.”

Out of the 140 summaries, only two were hallucinated, he said.

Minor inaccuracies were a little more common, however — appearing in 20 of 140 summaries.

Based on these findings, Parente noted that ChatGPT could help busy doctors and scientists decide which new articles in medical journals are most worthwhile for them to read.

. . . .

Dr. Harvey Castro, a Dallas-based board-certified emergency medicine physician and national speaker on artificial intelligence in health care, was not involved in the University of Kansas study but offered his insights on ChatGPT use by physicians.

“AI’s integration into health care, particularly for tasks such as interpreting and summarizing complex medical studies, significantly improves clinical decision-making,” he told Fox News Digital.

“This technological support is critical in environments like the ER, where time is of the essence and the workload can be overwhelming.”

Castro noted, however, that ChatGPT and other AI models have some limitations.

“Despite AI’s potential, the presence of inaccuracies in AI-generated summaries — although minimal — raises concerns about the reliability of using AI as the sole source for clinical decision-making,” Castro said.

Link to the rest at Fox News and thanks to F. for the tip.

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Missouri AG Sues Media Matters For Aggravated MEAN TO TWITTER

954792Remember when being the attorney general of a state was a real job that involved actual law? Well, take your Metamucil, Grandpa, because those days are over. Now it’s all about ownin’ the libs.

Here’s Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey doing his “job” yesterday on air with plagiarist shitposter Benny Johnson.

AG Bailey was there to talk up his spiffy new lawsuit against Media Matters for America (MMFA), who violated that statute that bars hurting Elon Musk’s feelings. See, MMFA made new Twitter accounts, followed a bunch of Nazis, and blocked the low rent ads that populate most of our feeds. This had the entirely predictable effect of generating ads for major companies next to explicitly pro-Nazi content — something Elon Musk’s pain sponge Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino had assured advertisers they’d be “protected from” under her stewardship.

Musk lost his shit, promising to file a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against MMFA and all its donors. The result was more like a wet fart, as the Nevada company shambled into federal court in Fort Worth demanding redress against the DC media outlet for a bunch of gobbledygook torts which are definitely not defamation.

After a little prodding from Trump’s racism czar Stephen Miller, Bailey and Texas AG Ken Paxton jumped forward to defend their favorite damsel in distress.

Paxton was apparently quicker on the draw dropping a demand for data on MMFA, which was met with a motion for a temporary restraining order filed in federal court in DC.

But Andy Bailey isn’t going to wait for some coastal elite judge to tell him what to do, no sir! Instead, he filed his subpoena on MMFA simultaneously with the petition to enforce it in the Circuit Court of Cole County. So on Monday, March 25, he demanded the names, addresses, and banking information of every MMFA donor in Missouri. And at the very same time, he marched into court and asked a state judge to issue a compliance order before MMFA could seek a TRO from a federal court.

18. The return date to produce all requested documentation and
information and submit the Certification of Compliance to the Attorney
General’s Office is no later than 10:00 a.m. April 15, 2024.

19. Media Matters has expressed its intent not to comply with CIDs
like this one.

20. For example, the State of Texas served on Media Matters a
virtually identical civil investigative demand in December of 2023, which
Media Matters refused to comply with and instead filed a lawsuit to block
compliance and disclosure of information and materials. See Exhibit 3 (Texas
CID); Exhibit 4 (Media Matters complaint); see generally Media Matters for
America, et al. v. Paxton, 1:24-cv-00147-APM (United States District Court for
the District of Columbia).

MMFA isn’t even out of compliance with the subpoena, which has a return date of April 15. Nevertheless, Bailey insists that “Media Matters has failed or will fail to comply … as it has expressed that it will not comply with similar investigative demands,” and thus he’s entitled to an immediate enforcement order.

The petition is otherwise barely passable as performance art:

Media Matters, a self-styled not-for-profit “progressive research and information center,” envisions itself monitoring, analyzing, and correcting
“conservative misinformation” in the U.S. media. In fact, this description falls
far short of reality for this political activist organization. Instead, rather than
passively “monitoring,” Media Matters has used fraud to solicit donations from
Missourians in order to trick advertisers into removing their advertisements
from X, formerly Twitter, one of the last platforms dedicated to free speech in
America.

Media Matters has pursued an activist agenda in its attempt to destroy
X, because they cannot control it. And because they cannot control it, or the
free speech platform it provides to Missourians to express their own viewpoints
in the public square, the radical “progressives” at Media Matters have resorted
to fraud to, as Benjamin Franklin once said, mark X “for the odium of the
public, as an enemy to the liberty of the press.” Missourians will not be
manipulated by “progressive” activists masquerading as news outlets, and they
will not be defrauded in the process.

Well … those are all words. They don’t have anything to do with the law or due process, but they do demonstrate AG Bailey’s red meat bona fides and suck up to Elon Musk. So, job well done, sir. Nailed it!


Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.


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How Realtors' settlement could change the buyer-agent relationship – Marketplace


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There are likely going to be big changes coming to how we buy and sell houses. On Friday the National Association of Realtors agreed to settle multiple lawsuits that accused its members of colluding to keep commission rates artificially high.
The settlement could lower the commissions all real estate agents receive as part of a home sale and, as opposed to the traditional model of home sellers paying the buyer’s agent, it also could mean more homebuyers directly paying their Realtors.
First-time homebuyer Jon Harlan really liked his Realtor. For the better part of two years, his agent put in offer after offer in Portland, Oregon’s competitive housing market, arranged showings and open house visits, and finally guided him and his wife through their purchase of a $600,000 farm house last fall.
Harlan really couldn’t tell you how much his Realtor was paid for doing all that.
“You almost aren’t thinking about compensation at all. And I went into it, like, not knowing that really the seller pays for the commission,” Harlan said.
The Realtors’ legal settlement could mean more agents, including those who are not members of the NAR, charging buyers hourly rates or working on retainer.
Harlan said that would have changed his house hunting pretty dramatically.
“If it were a per-hour thing, I think we would have been a lot different about some of the houses we chose to go look at. We would have been, you know, is this now worth paying for the time?” he said.
That may sound like a more expensive arrangement for homebuyers. But economist Abdullah Yavas at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business said under the traditional arrangement, sellers only technically pay for buyer’s agents. In reality, buyers were still footing the bill.
“We know from the literature that sellers pass on about half of the commission to the buyers in the form of a higher price,” Yavas said. “If the seller now doesn’t have to pay the commission, the price is likely to drop.”
There’s a perk to a commission being baked into a higher home price: Buyers can effectively finance it with a mortgage. Sacramento Realtor Erin Stumpf said many buyers may not be able to afford to pay agents out of pocket.
“A lot of our buyers are using down payment assistance, 3.5% FHA [Federal Housing Administration] loans, and those buyers do not have the resources to pay their agent directly,” she said.
Stumpf said she expects to still work primarily on commission, but she’s open to other arrangements.
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Landmark Settlement Breaks Up the Real Estate Cartel – The American Prospect

The collusive arrangement among real estate agents that led to Americans paying extortionate commissions is likely over.
by
March 18, 2024
10:00 AM
Mike Stewart/AP Photo
A realtors’ for sale sign is posted outside a home, February 1, 2024, in Aceworth, Georgia, near Atlanta.
There are far too many goods and services for which you can say Americans pay the highest prices in the world. One of those outliers was likely put to an end late last week, thanks to a remarkable settlement in a private antitrust case. The outcome shows that too many of America’s high costs are often a function of power, and that the tools to check that power and lower those costs cannot be unilaterally found at the Federal Reserve.
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) has agreed to end the age-old practice of 6 percent agent commissions for residential home sales, which are six times the level of the U.K. According to The New York Times, which first got the news, the settlement could drop U.S. commission costs by as much as 30 percent, which comes out to more than $8,000 on a home sale with the average purchase price of $417,000. It’s not going to suddenly make housing affordable, though the collusive arrangement did tend to drive home prices higher. And given that real estate commissions are a $100 billion-per-year business, we’re talking about $30 billion in savings, a not-incidental amount at a time when housing costs are a primary driver of inflation.
More from David Dayen
The end of the 6 percent commission is another example of the intelligent design of the Sherman Antitrust Act, with its private right of action. NAR is a powerful lobby that would have never let this happen if they had the wherewithal to stop it. But it had no politicians or regulators to persuade in this case; a group of Missouri homeowners and their legal team were the chief antagonists.
TYPICALLY IN A REAL ESTATE SALE, sellers pay a commission to their agent to manage creating the listing, making the home available for viewing, accepting offers, and closing the deal. But there’s a form of collusion involved: The buyer’s agent gets a share of that commission. That’s true despite the fact that it’s hard to understand why two agents are essential to a real estate sale. In the past, a buyer’s agent would find listings for clients, but in the age of Zillow and Redfin, purchasers have no problem doing that themselves. Worldwide, buyer agents are involved in only one-third of all sales; in the U.S., it’s about 89 percent.
This persisted because of a cartel-like scheme, coordinated through NAR and major real estate brokers. In the 1990s, NAR set a rule for their agents, known as the cooperative commission rule, requiring that any home listed for sale on a multiple listing service (MLS) include the commission rate that the seller will give to the buyer. Large brokers copy the NAR rule. These rates were allegedly negotiable, but in reality were mandatory. They are also based on percentages of the sale, so if home prices go up, so did the agent’s fee. That gives an incentive to the middlemen in the system to uplift listing prices and buyer offers.
Without getting on the MLS, few prospective homebuyers would see the listing; that’s how you’re finding those homes on Zillow and Redfin. This locks in the commission on both sides of the transaction. The sellers must compensate the buyer’s agent, and they coordinate their compensation to keep those rates standard, without negotiations. The buyer’s agent knows what houses will draw the standard commission. That way they can steer clients away from “For Sale by Owner” listings or other arrangements where the commission amount isn’t specified. This also tends to push prices upward.
Other services attempting to enter the real estate market, like a startup called Trelora that promised lower buyer commissions, were prevented from getting MLS data by large brokers and NAR. There was next to no escape from this agent commission cartel.
Commissions are folded into the sale price. They make houses a little bit more expensive through a concealed form of price-fixing. For 30 years, buyers and sellers endured this, until advocates and class action lawyers determined it was illegal, and sought to prove that in court.
Commissions are folded into the sale price. They make houses a little bit more expensive through a concealed form of price-fixing.
It took several years. NAR refused to settle a 2019 class action case alleging anti-competitive conduct, which went to trial before a federal judge in Kansas City. In October, a jury awarded the plaintiffs $1.8 billion in damages, just for home sellers in Missouri. (The sellers brought the case, saying that they shouldn’t be forced to pay out the buyers’ agents.) Because it’s an antitrust case, the judge was able to triple those damages to $5.4 billion if he wanted.
The same lawyers in the Missouri case quickly filed a national class action, and there were almost a dozen other lawsuits teed up. For context of the liability at play here, another case involving 20 large housing markets was set for trial shortly. If it were decided in the same manner as the Missouri case, damages could reach $40 billion. NAR had no available funds to even pay the Missouri damages, let alone other ones.
So they decided to settle. The fine of $418 million is in many ways the trivial part; NAR also agreed to eliminate the cooperative commission rule, end the requirement that brokers subscribe to the MLS, and mandate that all fee arrangements between buyers and agents be put down in writing. This should end most lawsuits over commissions, and come into effect by this summer. (The broker HomeServices of America, which is a Warren Buffett company, is still fighting this out in court, which should tell you something about America’s cuddliest billionaire.)
THIS WILL UNLOCK COMPETITION in a closed market. I’d expect services offering discounted rates or flat fees for real estate sales. And buyers may not have agents at all, simply someone to represent their interests at closing. You likely haven’t been to a travel agent in the last 20 years because you can do it yourself online. That’s what we could potentially see for homebuyers in the very near future.
Whatever results will require antitrust oversight. A large tech platform like Amazon or Google could undercut the entire market to gain share, and then recoup down the road when they’re the only option in town. Regulators will have to remain involved to ensure real estate agents don’t just shift from one cartel to another.
This will also likely lead to a mass exodus of agents from the real estate business, which for many was a side hustle of relatively easy money. Three million Americans have real estate licenses in America, compared to about 48,000 in the U.K., which has one-fifth the population. There are about 1.5 million active NAR realtors, and many of them will now have little reason to stay with the lobby shop. That’s good news for weakening the power of an organization that was influential enough in Washington to keep this collusive arrangement in place. And it means that other measures to improve the housing market for Americans, like incentives to add housing supply, won’t be subject to as powerful a lobby for the status quo.
(By the way, NAR’s past president, Kenny Parcell, resigned amid sexual harassment allegations last August; his replacement, Tracy Kasper, spent about four months in the top slot before resigning after being threatened with blackmail. It’s not exactly a tip-top operation poised to weather this storm.)
Nobody wants to see a million jobs or more incinerated. But an economy predicated on middlemen isn’t beneficial or stable. Real estate agents didn’t really get rich from the commission arrangement, because higher home prices lured more agents into the market. Fewer agents mean that the ones who are honest, hard-working, and good at their jobs will thrive, with lower rates but more activity. The brokers and NAR, who control the listing services, were the true beneficiaries of this cartel, and squeezing them out of the system will help everyone else.
An old settlement of a price-fixing case against NAR blocked the newly aggressive leadership at the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division from bringing an unfair competition case. (DOJ has been issuing strong briefs in private cases.) But “private attorneys general” helped right the wrongs in this market, thanks to the opportunity afforded under our antitrust laws. That will come in handy as even more hidden forms of price-fixing, embedded in algorithms and other forms of technology, proliferate.
We tend to think of inflation as the exclusive province of monetary policy, leaving it up to technocrats to twist dials on interest rates to manage prices. This settlement shows that cartel behavior is both rampant and often beyond the purview of central bankers. Strong oversight by the public, both through their elected representatives and through their own powers, is needed to counteract this growing area of overstuffed prices.
David Dayen is the Prospect’s executive editor. His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. His most recent book is ‘Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power.’
March 18, 2024
10:00 AM
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How new realtor rules could impact the AZ housing market – 12news.com KPNX

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PHOENIX — Veterans of Arizona’s real estate industry say new rules for realtors expected to kick in this summer will change the dynamics of the home purchasing process, but to what extent is unclear.
“There will definitely be some changes with the game of real estate, the profession in general,” said realtor Dennis Carr of HomeSmart.
The National Association of Realtors entered a settlement on Friday in a class action lawsuit where a judge ruled the association was violating anti-trust laws. The settlement establishes a new set of rules for agents buying and selling houses, pending a judge’s approval.
“Number one, the settlement would mean that in the listing agreement, the seller will no longer be able to specify an amount that they will pay the buyer’s agent as an incentive to get activity on their properties,” Carr said.
Agents have always been able to negotiate compensation amounts during the purchase process, but critics say the practice of listing a compensation amount on the MLS motivated some agents to steer their client to a house based on the potential profit the agent can make, not based on the best deal for the buyer.
Typically, a 6% commission fee wrapped into the final sale would be divided 50/50 between agents of the buyer and seller.
Now the seller is not assumed to pay the buyer’s agent a commission. However, that does not prevent the seller from negotiating a compensation amount with the buyer’s agent during negotiations, Carr said.
One likely consequence of the new rules is a group of buyers will simply not use a realtor.
“I think that savvy buyers that don’t think they need representation and are buying houses on a regular basis and are comfortable with the process, perhaps there may be a benefit to them because extra compensation won’t be built into the purchase,” Carr said.
Conversely, other buyers will need to negotiate with an agent on compensation before beginning the house hunting process.
“The buyers who could value the expertise of an agent to guide them through this emotional process of a lifetime, they will still want the representation.”
Real estate advisor Alonsso Lomeli said the seller will benefit by not being responsible to pay the full commission that many sellers’ agents are accustomed to paying.
“But keep in mind, the seller wants a buyer, so it works both ways now. It’s going to benefit the seller, but who is going to pay that (compensation)? It’s going to come down to negotiations in terms of the buyer’s agent,” Lomeli said.
Carr said he expects more competition among agents and some may leave the industry.
“I think this is going to be a time when a lot of part-time agents aren’t going to be part-time anymore,” Carr said.
The NAR says commissions have always been negotiable, issuing the following statement: “It has always been our goal to preserve consumer choice and protect our members to the greatest extent possible. This settlement achieves both of those goals.”
The settlement is going to erode the fixed margin many agents are accustomed to, said ASU Economist Dennis Hoffman. “The savvy ones are going to fight through this and demonstrate their track record and their value.”
News of the settlement comes at a bad time for the real estate industry which is dealing with a slow market. Although Hoffman says the real estate sector is not a driver of Arizona’s economy, it is an important component. Arizona has one of the highest ratios of real estate agents per capita. “I feel a little bit of concern for the agent community right now. Their livelihood is based upon the volume of homes transacted. And it is about half of what it was.”
Mark Stapp, professor of Real Estate at ASU’s W.P. Carey School of Business, says if compensation fees are not wrapped into the mortgage, some buyers may be squeezed out of purchasing a home.  “Maybe one of the things that transpires is that you will find buyers, especially at the lower end of the marketplace, less able to afford to buy a house because they don’t have the cash available to pay the agent.”
The alternative for lower-end buyers is they go into the process without an agent.
“And that’s not a good thing,” Stapp said.
He worries the new rules will reduce the pool of real estate agents and lead to more buyers going into the process without representation.
“The seller’s agent is not going to represent the buyer if they are representing the seller. There are many small details that can get you into trouble as a buyer. That’s the biggest concern I have.”
Buyers who want an agent will be expected to negotiate a flat free, no fee or a percentage commission. But Stapp also worries without the current compensation structure, the buyer will be more likely to be left alone in closing out a deal.
The current system was originally set up by consumer advocates in the 1990s because the buyer didn’t have proper representation, Carr said.
Now the pendulum may be swinging the other way.
“Right now, buyers don’t have to worry about having cash on hand because the compensation for realtors is already built into the process,” Carr said. “Entry level buyers who don’t have funds to enter a buyer-broker agreement may be at a disadvantage.”
Experts who spoke with 12News say they don’t expect a major impact to home prices.
“Will the price of homes go down? I doubt it,” said Stapp.
Hoffman closely follows Arizona housing trends.
“To the overall economy, I don’t see this as a huge deal because the elephant in the room is high mortgage rates and locked in sellers. Until we break through that there’s going to be a lot of friction in the real estate market.”
   
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